


On Having No Head

by DonnesCafe



Series: Eccentric Geniuses [4]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Love, M/M, Post-Episode: The Abominable Bride, Post-Reichenbach, Retirement, Sherlock Holmes's Retirement, Sussex, bodies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-12
Updated: 2016-10-12
Packaged: 2018-08-22 02:23:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8269084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DonnesCafe/pseuds/DonnesCafe
Summary: Heads, hearts, bodies...





	

He dreamt there was a head in the fridge again. Most people would have classified that as a nightmare, but not John Watson. The head-in-the-fridge dream was a fairly pleasant one compared to the more frequent one in which Sherlock fell and fell and fell. No, John always woke from the head dream with tears on his face, wishing it were true. Knowing it was totally irrational even as he did it, he went to the kitchen and opened the fridge door. 

No head. Of course there was no bloody head. There was beer because Lestrade had brought it last night. There was milk because Mrs. Hudson had bought it on Wednesday. Leftover curry because Molly had come over on Monday. No eyeballs in the microwave. No livers in the sink. No fingernails in his RAMC mug. Oh god, what he wouldn’t give for a head in the fridge. 

“I don’t care about the milk, Sherlock,” he said to the inside of the fridge. “I never really cared about the milk. Or the head. Come back. I’ll make you a deal. If you’ll not be dead, you can have as many heads as you want. In the fridge. You can have anything you want. You could have me, if you wanted. Would you ever have wanted that?” 

John put a shaking hand up to his mouth to stop the words. He sank slowly to the floor, the light from the fridge too bright, the chill from the open door twining around his spine. He knew he had to leave Baker Street. 

~~~~~  


Sometimes, Sherlock thought, it was like having no head. That should probably bother him more than it actually did. He would never voice this thought to anyone, least of all to John. He blamed John, of course. 

For much of his life, ‘he’ was his mind. Since he was, when he bothered to think in such terms, a materialist and a scientist, he understood his essential self as the processes of his brain, a consciousness honed and directed toward the Work, toward the rational. To the extent he sought happiness, he looked for it in the mental satisfactions of the exercises of his grey matter. He lived in his head and only reluctantly admitted any other needs. 

Did it start that first night? The night he met John, the night John saved him for the first time, he had suggested dinner just to prolong his time with this man. He was fascinating. But the food had tasted differently when John pushed it toward him. The duck became part of him in a disconcerting way. Something deep inside him relaxed. He felt grounded. The rice became part of… Good god, was this why people ate? He wanted more. Of something. He reluctantly took a bite of the Hunan shrimp. He frowned. This could get out of hand. 

It did. John made him tea. John brought him Lemsip when he caught that horrible flu at Christmas years ago. John stitched him up every time an encounter with a criminal had left him with a wound, grumbling that if Sherlock didn’t care about his body why should John bloody care? Sherlock closed his eyes and smiled, remembering that while John’s voice was peeved his hands were gentle, almost caressing. John’s hands woke something in him that he fought for years. Something that had nothing at all to do with his head. 

Sherlock stretched like a contented cat in the patch of winter sun where he sat and drew his ancient Belstaff tighter around himself. He looked around their Sussex garden, just put to bed for the winter. He heard the door to the cottage open behind him. John bringing him tea. John would fuss about Sherlock sitting out here in the cold. He would natter about Sherlock’s arthritis. He would brush Sherlock greying curls back from his forehead and check to see if Sherlock’s temperature was normal since he was getting over a bit of a cold. He would use this as an excuse to lure Sherlock back into the cottage where he would try to get him to eat some of the warmed-over beef stew from last night. Sherlock would pretend to be reluctant, then give in. Actually, he was getting hungry, and John had turned himself into an excellent cook. 

Later, John would try to talk him into going to bed at what John considered a reasonable time for old men. It amused Sherlock to pretend that his bee journal or his latest experiment or the article he was working on for _Forensic Pathology_ was more important than going to bed. He had to keep John on his toes, after all. They weren’t old yet. But he would eventually concede with feigned ill-grace and climb the stairs in John’s wake. Wonderful, beloved John, who would trail his hands over Sherlock’s chest, then pull him over, kissing one or the other of his many scars. Chest, back, and that particularly nasty one that ran all the way up one thigh. Their hands would drift, drift, play, grasp, holding on for dear life. For this dear life. 

If Sherlock lived more in his heart these days, in his gut, in his groin, that was actually fine with him. Perhaps heads, after all, were a bit over-rated.

**Author's Note:**

> Inspiration and title from David Bowie’s list of 100 favorite books. #4 – _On Having No Head_ by Douglass Harding.


End file.
